MacArthur B Arthur is pleased to present The Home Show, MacArthur B Arthur’s final exhibition.

The Home Show is about the domestic half of MacArthur B Arthur. It is about my relationship to the artists and curators I work with, how the dynamic of support is symbiotic- I get to live amongst changing beautiful ideas and objects, they get to present those ideas and objects to an audience. The audience with the most exposure to the art is always myself. I live with it; it goes away. Exhibitionism, as a word, sounds like it could be, ‘The condition afflicting the resident of a live-in gallery, whereby the occupant undergoes a cyclical re-framing of perception determined by the monthly influx, and dispersal, of objects whose combined signification synergistically displaces prior modes of comprehension.’ It could also mean exposing the parts of MacArthur B Arthur that are not normally exposed. The Home Show puts on display the peeked into ancillary facts, the hidden aspects of the rituals of living, collecting and organizing that make up my life. This is an homage to my changing perspective and the artist’s who have facilitated that shift as I transition the space from a gallery/home into a home environment. Each artist has been asked to make work that directly responds to, documents, reinterprets and re-imagines MacArthur B Arthur. I have asked Elizabeth Bernstein, Alex Clausen, Carey Lin, and Camilla Newhagen to document and intervene with the domestic aspects of the space.

Elizabeth Bernstein’s photos are culled from the everyday, the places where we establish our routines and build our lives. Within these environments, already crafted by the inhabitant, she spends time with the objects, manipulating and moving them around until they are built to reveal a psychology of vulnerability, intimacy, and longing. As much as they are about objects, place, a small gesture or glance; their essential aspect is in their ability to describe complex emotions that settle and shift along a nuanced continuum.

Alex Clausen manipulates furniture, arranging it to build a destabilizing experience between himself and the inhabitants as a way to explore relationships with them and their habitations, the spaces that we spend so much time designing and making our own. It is an obtuse and very literal way of exploring social, domestic and spatial frameworks.

Carey Lin asks in her paintings, ‘What does a sink say about the people who use it? What do they put into it in the course of a day or two? The document of a months-long call and response between the artist and the curator (and resident of the gallery space), resulted in kitchen sink portraits that investigate the temporary still lives that accumulate as we go about the daily business of living.’

Camilla Newhagen, borrow’s clothing and accessories from the drawers and closets of her family, friends and people she barely knows. She unsettles and re-imagines these worn materials – shaped and hardened by histories both personal and collective.

Kevin P. Clarke will have a piece that addresses a historical thread of domestic aesthetics, as historical markers and placeholders for narrative, imbued or implied, real and potential.